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[Ghost Hunter]

Splitting off from the Pirate FW topic.

Piracy is a career option in EVE that has been undeveloped and functionally ignored since the game's conception. All the systems you see currently that you can attribute to a 'Pirate playstyle', have existed since the game's early launch (year 1). In fact, there has been a net negative development in its capabilities in certain areas. Let us walk down the three steps of my point.


The first is defining what Piracy currently consists of. As it is understood currently, Pirate players are ones who take security status penalties that eventually ban them from High Security space. You do this in one of two ways : Suicide ganking, or 'non-consensual' PVP in Low Security space. Some associate 'NPC Faction penalties' with piracy, but that is such an alien connection most people do not usually associate it with piracy.

The net effect is you are visibly a 'criminal', but only because you are banned from High Security through a numerical game mechanic. There was once a pseudo-black market in the trading of illegal goods, but that was removed years ago and shunted forward onto the primary market. No other activity defines Piracy, in a positive or negative way, that exists in the game system. This is the strictest way to define Piracy as it exists currently; other pseudo-pirate activities exist, but they have long been annexed into different areas of the game.


My second step is the dynamic of 'following the Pirate lifestyle' versus 'Skipping it over for Null Security'. In pursuing the Pirate life style, your career exiles you from a full third of the game, High Security space. You are not allowed to return unless you essentially abandon the life style and recover your security status. So, what do you get in return for pursuing the life of a criminal? Nothing but the willingness you have already to criminally PVP in Low Security.

There is nothing in Low Security unique to your criminal life style. No new doors are opened, no illegal or criminal underworlds to involve yourself in. There is no reward to your risk of being a Pirate. There is only the fact you are banned from High Security, and that is it. No development cycles have been dedicated to this area, I am confident in saying, quite ever. The issues posed by this are made worse by the penalty-free world of Nullsec space.

In Null Security space, you never suffer penalties for conducting criminal PVP - in fact you gain security status, if anything. You can massacre dozens of mining barges and skip back to High Security without a care in the world. You're never locked out; and you're never locked into, either. All the content you could access in Low Security is available to you, in better and more rewarding forms. It is at this point you can wonder, 'why would I ever Pirate then?' and understand why Piracy exists in name only.


Our final step is the reality of Piracy and its invalid existence in the world of EVE. For ten years the Pirate life style has remained an idea only because of the above two mentioned aspects : Suicide ganking, and Low Security criminal PVP. Yet all eyes are turned towards suicide ganking, for that is the one that impacts 'peaceful' players the most. It is the strongest activity in the game that is close to true Piracy and the only attention it has ever been afforded was buffing High Security CONCORD.

I have wondered for years why Low Security is kept in any sense when the golden child of Null Security exists. It is overshadowed in every capacity by Null Security and the only game mechanics associated with it have gone malnourished for a decade. It is a relic whose purpose of providing a 'Criminal' to the 'Lawful' of High Security has never been fulfilled. The only unique mechanic it possesses, Factional Warfare, mimics Null Security conflict so closely I am not certain why are you not encouraged to go there directly. Perhaps you even are, although that is beyond my awareness if it is so.


It is for these reasons I am in the camp that CCP has no respect for the Pirate life style. Nothing has been done for it, and no clear intent or accountable promises have been offered to do something for it. At this point in the game's life, it would make more sense to amputate the entire sector and redefine space as High Security and Null Security. The former Low Security territory can keep its Warp Disruption Bubble and Sovereignty Take Over immunity, of course, but you no longer incur security status penalties and sentry gun aggression.

If that sounds wonderful, then you can understand my position.


[spoiler]

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[Creep]

Posted this in the other thread before this topic existed:

CCP doesn't respect the Pirate life style. We would have to split our discussion off to address this in more detail.

Please do. I would love to hear a detailed explanation for this claim.

I disagree in that I think that CCP very much wants Piracy to be a vibrant part of EVE, and they advertise the shit out of it to bring in new players. CCP's vision for EVE definitely has a "...and you can be a fuckin' SPACE PIRATE!" vibe. CCP does not foster an attitude of 'Fuck Pirates lol'.

I agree in that piracy is almost exclusively emergent gameplay. If people stopped wanting to pretend to be eye-patch-wearing, yarr-screaming pirates, it would dry up and the PvP would move to Syndicate.
The only things that CCP has done to recognize piracy mechanic-wise is by punishing it (sec status, sentry-guns, etc). I'm not saying that they shouldn't be punishing it (I want my -10.0 status goddamn it), but there are no countering mechanics to reward/encourage it either.
When low-sec residents called out to CCP to fix Lowsec (in the hopes of making the smallgang/solo life sustainable without a highsec mission alt, and bring more people into lowsec), CCP made FactionWar. Which brought a lot of risk-averse large fleets in lowsec, a great deal of cloaky plexers, and, yes, some excellent small-medium gang groups. Then they took away 1/10's and 2/10's which had been sources for PVP for many pirates, and drove many solo pirates out of lowsec. This has led to non-FW lowsec to become sources of tumbleweed rather than Yarring, with most PVP in these areas occurring in systems which neighbor hisec systems, and essentially nowhere else.

[Ghost Hunter]

Posted this in the other thread before this topic existed:

CCP doesn't respect the Pirate life style. We would have to split our discussion off to address this in more detail.

Please do. I would love to hear a detailed explanation for this claim.

I disagree in that I think that CCP very much wants Piracy to be a vibrant part of EVE, and they advertise the shit out of it to bring in new players. CCP's vision for EVE definitely has a "...and you can be a fuckin' SPACE PIRATE!" vibe. CCP does not foster an attitude of 'Fuck Pirates lol'.

The marketing is very much utilizing the idea that Piracy is a viable career choice, and a hook for buyers. The reality is that this is a vapid marketing technique. There's no meat behind it. There is even barely bones to attribute a Pirate life style, let alone provide a warm body. In this instance I feel it is one hand saying something, the rest of the body not caring about it.

'Build your own destiny' holds more water in that Null Security can actually enable that, if you follow it through. 'Become a Pirate' ... what exactly do you do that makes you a Pirate, again? So on, so forth.

I find the rest of your post agreeable.

[Louella Dougans]

Piracy! attack rich merchant ships, steal their treasure!

assumes there are rich merchant ships. And treasure.

Lowsec lacks unique resources that provide a reason to be there.

There used to be merchant ships, but they were ISK-farming setups. Several systems were absolutely full of them. Untanked industrials, dozens of them, hauling mission items that were worthless to anyone else.
Moon mining things bring in ships from nullsec. Carriers and such, in large numbers, to attack/defend moon mining things.

Without a reason to be there, other than the challenge, there just will not be the merchant ships for pirates to shoot at.

[Esna Pitoojee]

I will add by defining and addressing two further subcategories of piracy which I feel are relevant to this discussion:

- The gatecamper: The gatecamper is a specific subclass of pirate who, as the name suggests, camps gates for an extended period of time and catches anything that happens to transit through. Admittedly gatecamping was always the 'weakest' form of piracy in my opinion, as it takes the least skill to perform and the least skill to evade; it is not clear to me that gatecamping was anything more than a niche role among pirates. Nonetheless, three things in my opinion have hampered the existence of outlaw gatecampers:
* Retribution is more likely. Extended-time gatecamping (as opposed to merely waiting on a gate for a fleet you know is coming at a certain time) was generally done by a smaller force; as space has gotten more crowded, retribution or an overwhelming push-through has become harder to avoid.
* The abundance of nano'ed, cloaky, and jump-capable ships has reduced the availability of targets for gatecampers. Among the gatecampers I used to encounter in the Providence area, for instance, almost all were targeting individuals moving their own ships. The sheer number of these hulls that are likely to be jumped around gatecamps aboard a carrier or JF means that you are not going to see nearly as many targets.
* Expanding on what Ghost said above, it is possible to gatecamp without going pirate. If you don't believe me, go back and look at what the Hofjaldgund-Eszur gate in Metropolis used to be like - for a good six to eight hours of the day, it would be covered by sensor-boosted thrashers blapping everything Amarr that came though - but only Amarr. Neutral targets were often ignored, because why go outlaw when you can do it safely?

- The ransomer: The ransomer is the legend of EVE pirate lore - the pirate with enough honor to not blow away a paying foe, enough guts to stick around while ransom is negotiated, and enough firepower to hold his own if things get hairy. The ransomer is also one of the classes of pirate that I can veritably say did exist in the past, and has been all but wiped out by changes to the game and community:
* A profusion of newer, more bloodthirsty outlaws erased much of the e-honor accumulated by ransomers. Why pay if you think you're just going to be obliterated?
* Again, as space became crowded, retribution became an issue - I don't just mean your victim's allies, but other people searching the system for that flashy outlaw they noticed...
* Finally, rare stuff became more common. The ransomer relies on the victim wanting to be down some ISK but have his ship intact; many of the preferred targets from the past (Navy Battleships, T2 hulls, even capitals) are now churned out factory-style rather than being rare and unique products.

[Pieter Tuulinen]

Pirate = Cloaky Battleship Smartbombing gatecamps.
Pirate = Characters with six years of SPs and Daredevils chasing newbies in Atrons.

Are there other types of pirates in lowsec? Pirates seem to be nullbros who come into lowsec looking for low hanging fruit.

[Creep]

Pirate = Cloaky Battleship Smartbombing gatecamps.
Pirate = Characters with six years of SPs and Daredevils chasing newbies in Atrons.

Are there other types of pirates in lowsec? Pirates seem to be nullbros who come into lowsec looking for low hanging fruit.

Leave FW space for once. R1fta, Tuskers, 7-2, NOVAK, Screaming Hayabusa, many, many more. Then again, could be you just have a shitty timezone.
Still Ransoming too, Esna.


Additionally, I'm always interested by the way that pirates are perceived by non-lowsec residents and those who are too risk-averse to grab an AF and roam lowsec on a daily basis. You see gatecamps as a hassle to evade, avoid, or wait-out. I (and many others) see gatecamps as an opportunity to fight. Either go it alone or batphone two or three fellow pirates to bust it or die trying.
Frankly I have no patience for camping anything, so I always rot out after ten minutes and instead become the willing 'victim'. But much like checking the belts, scanning planets/sun, a gate is location to violence spaceships at for us.

I'd also like to point out the 'ohnoez they fly big tanky/cloaky/gang-linked ships and gank noobs' perception comes from Lowsec's inherent depopulation (when new players are the only ones to shoot, guess what? We're going to shoot them), and also that little inconvenience which is: We're allowed to fly ships other than rifters, despite what conventional wisdom suggests. Yes, this includes ships which allow us to be rather dangerous at times.
This is exacerbated by the vast majority of pirates being very spacepoor, and relying on loot sales/ransom for a large chunk of their income. Losing a ship can be very big blow to their wallets, hence why they will utilize ships which give them a good chance of victory, rather than throwing away ship after ship to larger fleets.
Personally, I think the velator+learnign how to get a good warp-in is hugely underappreciated, but I am not a leet pvper either.

[orange]

It seems like there are two sets of actions tied up in the discussion.

PvE piracy, ie sticking it to the CONCORD empires and doing stuff they don't want people to do.

PvP piracy, ie attacking other players for fun and profit.

PvP piracy necessitates operating somewhere were there may be value and preferably juicy targets of opportunity.  A small group of players raiding a null-sec empire are effectively pirates against that empire.   The problem is the other direction, raiding high-sec shipping lanes and going after juicy high-sec players.

The huge barrier to pirate PvE content does not help, nor the relative ease of access of high-end PvE content in high sec.

My entirely overly simplistic solution would be to move all the high-level empire agents to border/low-sec systems and only give missions into low-sec space (where else are you going to find fleets of rats).

I would also make the skill Criminal Connections mean something - it provides access to the level 1-3 pirate agents in low-sec space.

Lastly, all L4+ missions take on a more FW mission mode and add a mechanism that players who join a faction can see places that opposing missions have been generated, call it Pirate Warfare (PW).

Caldari Navy mission runners (because you now need to run missions with friends) pick up a L4 mission against Guristas.  In doing so, they are accepting entry into the PW and are flagged as such (and are juicy LP targets now for pirates).  A local pirate corp, who has signed up to be part of the Guristas, has someone watching the map for activated anti-Guristas missions and spots the activated Caldari Navy mission 4 jumps out.  They form up their own small squadron and head that direction.   The CN runners are just about to finish up their mission when the Guristas capsuleers enter the system.  The CN runners now have to make a choice of whether to go-to-ground and risk losing the mission, abandoning the mission and attempting to escape the system, or fighting the newly arrived hostiles (who are valuable LP targets).

[Makkal]

Didn't they already move high level agents to low space?

I honestly find attempt to 'force' people into low space a bit silly. No one had to 'force' me into null-sec despite it being just as lawless.

[Katrina Oniseki]

We at I-RED love pirates, OOC. We have a special soft spot for Tuskers, from what I remember. They used to operate around Placid and tended to be the kind of pirates we all love to imagine. Ransoming swashbucklers with amusing yet matured smacktalk in local. The kinds that would gank you five on one one day, then throw up a gf and o7 m8 when you do the same to them the next day... then a week later you'd be flying side by side with them to take down some caps caught on an unrelated POS. That's just the Tuskers. We've had great experiences with independant roaming pirates, Star Fraction, Milo's gang, Hulemand & Co., and TSF. Many of those are also roleplayers of course, which may color their attitudes... but generally speaking, I-RED has had great gaming experiences with actual pirates.

That's the sort of piracy we'd like to see make a return in lowsec. Those were the enemies we loved to fight in lowsec. The types of pirate bros that we had a professional rivalry with. I have a sparkly view of those days down in Placid... and I'm sure there was some bad blood somewhere... but I'd like to compare it to I-RED's experience with the militias.

By and large, a majority of our interaction with the militias has been nothing but fueding and cheap shots. Traded by both sides including us, no doubt.. but generally speaking, it has been a completely different relationship. There's too much farming and money in FW as I imagine. Too much for people to get upset about. It's not about the fights anymore, it's about T5 and LP. It's about whining over who's winning and who CCP favors, and when RP is concerned... for a while it was also about claims of 'treason' of varying eyerolling sorts.

So... I guess what I'm getting at is... I would be highly unsupportive of gameplay mechanics that reward piracy in any similar fashion as FW. Let piracy be about the fights, not about the rewards. I would be unsupportive of system ownership and/or occupation. I would be extremely unsupportive of pirate militias. I think it would cause pirates to start acting like the militias, and in my view... that's bad.

[Hamish Grayson]

Piracy! attack rich merchant ships, steal their treasure!

assumes there are rich merchant ships. And treasure.

Jam cynos in low-sec and force JFs to jump into a null-sec/low-sec border system instead of a low-sec/highsec boarder system so that they have to move through low-sec to arrive in highsec.   This also keeps out the capital blobs from low-sec.

* Finally, rare stuff became more common. The ransomer relies on the victim wanting to be down some ISK but have his ship intact; many of the preferred targets from the past (Navy Battleships, T2 hulls, even capitals) are now churned out factory-style rather than being rare and unique products.

Yea, right after CCP introduced pay to win (plex) every half wit badger popper suddenly had a Mach.

[Aria Jenneth]

Yea, right after CCP introduced pay to win (plex) every half wit badger popper suddenly had a Mach.

Idiots having pretty stuff has never been a problem for pirates.

Quite the opposite.


Ghost Hunter, piracy has always been, to some degree, a victim of its own popularity. Lowsec has greater rewards than highsec, though lower than null. It can be exploited freely, but never controlled.

In principle, this is a great idea. Sadly, the players who have an enthusiasm for piracy are outnumbered only by the players who are terrified of pirates, so, but for a very brave or foolish few, lowsec goes unexploited.

Too many pirates feeding on too few targets. That's lowsec, and that's the problem. It's not one that CCP's favor would solve.

[Silas Vitalia]

Ghost is right in that there are few game mechanics to push people into the 'piracy' gameplay. 

Let's not forget though that the Retribution was in fact a Pirate Expansion. This was the expansion that changed gate sentry mechanics, and stopped them from shooting drones.   For pirates like us this was a big change in mechanics. Being able to ping off a grid with a sentry firing and then return and not be aggressed was a big mechanic change.

While not ideal I like the fact that lowsec is still sort of the bastard child of EVE.   We get our own special little gameplay that no one else likes and I'm fine with that.

I think with the changes to ice mining and security tags lowsec will see some interesting days ahead though!

.... and YARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

... I still ransom people too, btw.  I'm like 0/10 lately for anyone actually wanting to pay up, but I do still have the fleet stop shooting and at least try sometimes

[Creep]

... I still ransom people too, btw.  I'm like 0/10 lately for anyone actually wanting to pay up, but I do still have the fleet stop shooting and at least try sometimes

I generally only have success on those rare occasions that I snag the pod. In January I ransomed a laser 'cane though. I imagine that swiftly became someone else's hilarious killmail.

[Ghost Hunter]

Yea, right after CCP introduced pay to win (plex) every half wit badger popper suddenly had a Mach.

Idiots having pretty stuff has never been a problem for pirates.

Quite the opposite.


Ghost Hunter, piracy has always been, to some degree, a victim of its own popularity. Lowsec has greater rewards than highsec, though lower than null. It can be exploited freely, but never controlled.

In principle, this is a great idea. Sadly, the players who have an enthusiasm for piracy are outnumbered only by the players who are terrified of pirates, so, but for a very brave or foolish few, lowsec goes unexploited.

Too many pirates feeding on too few targets. That's lowsec, and that's the problem. It's not one that CCP's favor would solve.

It is the High->Low->Null chain of economic progression I gape at, more often than not. The quantum leap between High Security and Low/Null Security is so significant there cannot be a middle ground. The same risk in Low Security is nearly, literally only one module difference, the same as Null Security. In fact, due to the over predation you mention, it is often more risky than Null Security. There is little unique content to Low Security, either. What is there is a weaker and less worthwhile version than Null Security's. Why entertain the idea of a middle ground when its functional reality is so vastly small it has led into the state I mentioned in the OP?

This is what boggles me. There's no development of Low Security. There are no strong reasons to go for Low Security's risks when you can hop-scotch to Null Security for even better rewards for the same risk. If anything Low Security acts as a negative value in the ecological equation. It's hurting players who try to make a career there because it is so badly designed.

One could argue that Faction Warfare isn't that bad, however. Quite a few find it worthwhile to be involved in, principally for the money making and territory rowing between the factions. It's quite hilarious to me in the context of this discussion; I hate what Faction Warfare did for the story, but it is the only 'functional' mechanic in Low Security. Yet it isn't Low Security. You could turn it into Null Security and it would still be a functional mechanic. More so perhaps because it would attract Null Security players to the conflict!